Blizzard’s Got A Serious Scalping Problem On Its Hands

On day 0 of BlizzCon 2026—like, the Friday before the event when you could pick up your badge but there was no con going on yet—the line for the Blizzard merch store was several hours long. It snaked all over the hall. I have friends who stood in it for two, three hours, just for the opportunity to spend money. I saw that line at about 3pm, said “Nope” out loud to myself, and left. Then, one of my friends who was in the line sent me a photo of a con-goer who had obtained this item: Oh! That’s Pepe! The little orange bird friend from World of Warcraft whom I love! I have a little Pepe of my own at home, yes. But my Pepe is not wearing a cozy little fur cloak and holding a tiny cup of cocoa and marshmallows like this one is. I’m rarely one to be swayed by merchandise, but I asked my friend to grab me one if he saw one when he got to the front of the line. Obviously, by the time he did, they were sold out. I initially brushed this off. Pepe is very popular, obviously many people would want to purchase one, and I didn’t need more plushes lying around. But as BlizzCon went on, it became increasingly apparent that BlizzCon, and Blizzard more broadly, is developing a serious scalper problem. And worse, Blizzard itself isn’t doing all that much to curb it. Part of the problem is the exclusivity of many items you could obtain from BlizzCon. As I said, Pepe himself selling out isn’t shocking. He’s very well-loved. It’s irritating to see several of him listed as sold on eBay for as much as $155 when, at the show, he only cost around $30, but I’ll get over that. But lots of other, far more egregious resales are going on, empowered by artificial scarcity. For instance, BlizzCon includes an event called the Darkmoon Faire. The Darkmoon Faire is popular and has a limited capacity, so you have to stand in a long line to get into it. Once inside, the Faire is full of activities, freebies, a bustling hub of pin trading and collecting, and more things to buy. For instance, there’s a duck pond where you first have to purchase a ticket, then wait in line to use it, then use a fishing rod to catch a random duck from a pond, then—if you happened to get a duck with a star on it—you get a code for an exclusive World of Warcraft in-game pet. So let me recap that again: you have to buy a BlizzCon pass, stand in the long line to get into BlizzCon, then stand in another really long line for the Darkmoon Faire, then make a purchase, then stand in another really long line, all for a random chance at getting a robotic duck in World of Warcraft that you can’t get anywhere else. Oh, yeah, and codes for these ducks are all over eBay, with actual sales as high as $600 just for this pet. You’ve got to be kidding me! Let’s think about Pepe again real quick: also in the Darkmoon Faire, there’s a $30 plushie blind box you can stand in line to buy that includes one of eight different plush toys, including Pepe. Blind boxes are nothing new, but purchasers also had a random chance to receive a code with their box for another pet: a flying axolotl. These, too, are selling on eBay for as much as $500 a pop! What are we doing here? Why is this a gacha game? This is, as far as we know, the only way there is or ever will be to get any of these pets. And look, World of Warcraft pets have been somewhat of a meme for years. People who love them love them, but a lot of players just ignore them, as they don’t really have much function outside of aesthetics and a silly, Pokémon-like battle system that’s fully optional to ever engage with. But it still sucks that for people who do care about such things, these pets are locked behind not just an event ticket purchase, but also multiple lines, another purchase, and random chance. The natural result of this is that people with cash to burn are absolutely going to slurp up as many as they can, take them home, and resell them for exorbitant amounts of money. It doesn’t have to be this way! And this isn’t just limited to BlizzCon merchandise. World of Warcraft: Forever, which was revealed at the show, comes in (among other, cheaper variants) a shiny Collector’s Edition costing $150. It comes with the game bundle in question as well as a bunch of shiny goodies like a big ol’ statuette, pins, art prints, and an admittedly nice-looking mousepad. This edition of the game is purchasable online, but has sold out, been restocked, and sold out again multiple times in the three days since it was announced. Tons of players are complaining online that they can’t purchase a single one for themselves even if they open the store right as they receive the restock alert, claiming it has sold out within seconds each time. Meanwhile, we’ve got this crap going on: © eBay Ugh! Why! As one person points out on Reddit, these editions are not restricted to individuals with existing Battle.net accounts. And while it says only three can be purchased per household, you can just use different emails to get around that restriction and get as many as you want if you’ve got the tech to snap them up fast: I have some sympathy for Blizzard here; online scalpers are getting increasingly clever at finding ways around protections, and there are so many of them anymore that you’re always going to have at least a few causing issues, no matter what you do. But it’s hard not to see Blizzard as at least a little complicit, even if inadvertently, in both of these situations. It designed this absurd gacha system of pet codes at BlizzCon, and it had fairly lax restrictions on Collector’s Edition purchases. We’ll have to see what restocks on the Collector’s Edition look like in the coming days, as that may alleviate some of the tension, though in that case I feel bad for the poor saps who already dumped hundreds of dollars more than the retail price on an item they could have just bought anyway. God, the scalper economy sucks. If it’s not Blizzard, it’s Pokémon, or concert tickets, or something else. Shame to everyone contributing to this crap. Both Pepe and myself think it’s embarrassing. © Kotaku